Product Description

Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 software. Show your style with amazing audio and video effects and share your movies on YouTube, your own website, disc, and virtually anywhere else. Visually tag video clips and photos to categorize by people, places, or events. Turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks. Adobe Premiere Elements automatically applies coordinated transitions, music, and professionally designed layouts for titles, credits, and disc menus. Create your story faster in the Sceneline, an easier alternative to the more traditional video-editing Timeline, where you can make a movie by simply dragging and dropping thumbnails of your clips, transitions, and effects. Choose from a set of world-class Adobe fonts designed to look great on video, and customize them with shadows, glows, and other effects. Add in background music and sound effects with the new Audio Mixer, which lets you easily adjust relative volumes and create slideshows and movies that move to the music. Animate titles to fit your movie's personality Mix and refine your audio and edit to the beat of a favorite song Customize your discs with interactive menus Easily add dazzling effects to impress your audience Create visual interest with eye-catching transitions Share in many ways from one convenient place Create dynamic, personalized DVDs and high-definition Blu-ray Discs Easily upload your movies to YouTube and your personal website Share movies on mobile phones and portable media players Share movies in multiple ways from one convenient place Add professional-quality animated transitions and effects System requirements - Intel Pentium 4 or compatible processor; Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, 512MB RAM or higher, 4.5GB free space, Color monitor with 16-bit color video card, 1,024x768 monitor resolution at 96dpi or less,

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3150 in Software
• Brand: Adobe
• Model: 25530473
• Released on: 2007-10-05
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .50 pounds

Features

• Get started quickly with easy moviemaking options
• Show your style with amazing video and audio effects
• Share on YouTube, your own website, DVD, and mobile devices
• Enjoy movies in high definition, including on Blu-ray Disc
• Turn a sequence of clips into a polished movie in minutes with Movie Themes

Amazon.com
Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4--the newest version of the best-selling consumer video-editing software. Get started quickly with all your video clips and photos at your fingertips and a choice of easy options for transforming them into polished movies. Show your personal style with amazing visual effects, rich audio, and interactive menus. Then broadcast far and wide by uploading your movies directly to YouTube or your personal sharing site; share with family and friends on DVD, mobile phones, and portable media devices; and even enjoy movies in high definition, including on Blu-ray Disc.

Get started quickly with all your media at your fingertips.

Add professional-quality animated transitions and effects.

Share movies in multiple ways from one convenient place.

Create fun movies in as little as 15 minutes
Create and share great-looking movies in minutes with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 software. Get started quickly with easy moviemaking options; show your style with amazing audio and video effects; and share your movies on YouTube, your own website, disc, and virtually anywhere else.

Create your first movie in minutes

• Find what you need faster using the same Organizer that's included with Adobe Photoshop Elements software. Visually tag video clips and photos to categorize by people, places, or events. Then you can view, search, and sort your assets in a variety of ways--including by filename, tag, date, and time--and quickly start making your movie.
• Turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks! Choose from event-based themes like Wedding and Birthday or style-based themes such as Silent Film and Music Video. Adobe Premiere Elements automatically applies coordinated transitions, music, and professionally designed layouts for titles, credits, and disc menus. Apply themes to entire projects or just the portions you specify.
• Create your story faster in the Sceneline, an easier alternative to the more traditional video-editing Timeline, where you can make a movie by simply dragging and dropping thumbnails of your clips, transitions, and effects. Practical new options, like the ability to copy and paste thumbnails, make the Sceneline even easier to use.

Show your style with amazing effects

• Choose from a set of world-class Adobe fonts designed to look great on video, and customize them with shadows, glows, and other effects. Then animate your titles to make them bounce, spin, or zoom across your scenes.
• Add in background music and sound effects with the new Audio Mixer, which lets you easily adjust relative volumes. And create slideshows and movies that move to the music by letting the software detect the tempo of your soundtrack and sync the beginning and end of each scene with the beats.
• Easily personalize your menus! Start with professionally designed menu templates, and then type in text and drag and drop to add your own video clips, images, and audio.

Share your movies virtually anywhere

• See all of your sharing options in one convenient location, the new Sharing Center. Follow easy steps for creating your movie once and then sharing it in multiple ways, including on disc, the web, and mobile devices.
• Add a custom, interactive menu and scene index, and then share your movie on a single- or dual-layer DVD or high-definition Blu-ray Disc that's optimized for best results.
• Broadcast far and wide by uploading your movies directly to YouTube or your personal sharing page. Adobe Premiere Elements 4 takes care of optimizing and formatting for the specific destination so your movies always look great.

Customer Reviews

Best of the 2007 releases... but that isn't saying much :/
Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is the best of the 2007 enthusiast-level video editing software packages on the market... but that really isn't saying much. Media editing on the PC is EXTREMELY frustrating because ALL of the software at the hobbyist/enthusiast level is either 1) buggy, 2) difficult to use, or 3) both. In fact, it is hard to say that Premiere Elements 4 is the "best" of the 2007-released programs out there; it would be more accurate to say that the other video editors that came out in 2007 perform at levels lower than PE4. A few examples include...

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 - Confusing and counter-intuitive interface as well as incompatibility with certain OS-aspects and hardware make this editor a no-go for most.

Pinnacle Studio 11 - Extremely buggy, poor rendering, and reports of system corruption (??? check out the reviews and newsgroup posts!) will keep most away.

Windows Movie Maker - Version 6 (or three if you aren't going by OS numbering) isn't available for XP... just Vista. 6 doesn't have the power and versatility of Premiere Elements, but it is vastly improved over the XP version. Windows Movie Maker 6 is worth checking if you have Vista, because most version of the OS get it for free (XP also contains the older version of both it and Media Encoder).

Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 10 - Roxio, best known for DVD and CD burning software, adds media editing to their suite. Sadly, it crashes so often that it creates more frustration than fun. Almost non-existant tech support and months without a patch are signs that this is software to avoid.

You'd think it would be easy to recommend Premiere Elements 4 with such poor competition, but it is not. On release, PE4 has shown itself to be buggy. During the first three days I used it, the program crashed four times and even erased all of the editing I had saved during one event. Turning off auto-saves helped, as did only importing one file at a time (rather than an entire folder). PE3 had somewhat similar crash issues before it was patched, but eventually became extremely stable (Adobe has decent support for their releases, unlike some companies). PE4 also lacks some of the encoding features many of us would have liked - you can't capture from most cards, and the getting video from DV and harddrive camcorders can be hit-or-miss depending on your specific hardware and whether or not it is supported. Finally, PE4 does not support numerous file types "straight out of the box" that it probably should (the best example of this is .flv "flash" files that PE4 can create but that it can not edit nor import).

What's good about PE4? When it works, the interface is easy to understand and work with. The video files produced tend to be top-notch, and there are a lot of "advanced" options for new users to grow into. There are numerous plug-ins available to expand the power of the software, and many support avenues are available (including books, newsgroups, and discussion lists). DVD burning is built in, simple, professional-looking, and can be improved upon if Photoshop Elements is used (Photoshop can build DVD menu templates). There are some great effects that can be used, and you don't have to have a degree in video editing to learn how to use them. There is also a decent (but not complete) range of pre-set file-saving options to choose from, including QuickTime, Windows Media, AVI, MPEG, Flash, and various mobile products.

Summary: Premiere Elements 4 is the best of the 2007 video editing releases, but it is still buggy and could use improvement. I'd recommend waiting for the first major patch before buying, but if you really need video editing software, try downloading the demo from http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/ and seeing if it is right for you (it was available at the time of this writing. Note that many of the other products mentioned also have demo versions available, too).

For those thinking of upgrading from Premiere Elements 3: Once patched, I never had a problem with PE3 crashing - not so with PE4. Wait for Adobe to release a decent patch before upgrading (it was not available at the time of this writing, but it may be up now - check the site). The new look of PE4s interface is nice, but PE3s wasn't bad, either. The new features range from pointless to moderately useful, but aren't groundbreaking: Beat detection (useful in rare instances), improved audio mixer (nice!), ability to burn to Blu-Ray, upload to YouTube function (pointless), improved keyframe control (can be VERY useful), and various new settings/save options (very useful) are included.

Best in class
I don't usually write reviews for products but I felt compelled to after reading the damning reviews from other users.

PE4 isn't a perfect product but it far surpasses any of the other products in this class that I've used, including several generations of Windows Movie Maker, Ulead VideoStudio, Ulead Movie Factory and Pinnacle Studio.

I'm using an Intel Dual-Core 2.4GHz system with 2GB RAM and a 250GB HDD running Win Vista Home Premium 32-bit. My computer OS environment is definitely not a "clean install" as I do a lot of software development on it as well as a lot of audio / video / photo editing. I had no trouble installing PE4 and it ran fine out of the box. I've been testing the software pretty thoroughly for the past couple of days building AVI's and burning several DVD's from video clips and photos and have had very few problems. The program has crashed and locked up 2 times, once while scrubbing through a complex transition between 2 videos and another time while editing some text for titles. There's no question that this is an annoyance but the high-end features that you get for under $100 are unbeatable IMHO. The level of customization is unparalleled when handling text, menus, audio and motion effects. Some of the interface elements are a little unintuitive at first but a few quick glances at the Help file circumvented any major dilemnas. Most of the interface is what you'd expect from Adobe - professional and slick.

The effects and transitions render well and the text / fonts for titles look sharp and impressive. The supplied templated menus are a little cheesy and the motion-type menus from Windows MM and Ulead are much nicer. I wish Adobe had spent a little more time here to give users a richer, more polished set of menus.

Overall, however, I was really impressed with the fine control you have over everything from the audio mixing and video editing to motion trails (complete with Bezier paths) for the motion effects. This level of control extends to DVD creation as well. In other products, when creating a DVD menu, it is often frustrating setting the text you want in the place you want it or deciding exactly which main menu and scene menu items to include and display. With PE4, you can fine-tune this to your heart's desire.

I haven't tried uploading to YouTube so I can't comment on that function, nor have I tried working through a High-def workflow. However, if you're primarily working with standard-definition video or creating slideshows, I have no hesitation in wholeheartedly recommending this product.

I hope someone finds this review useful and gives PE4 a shot. For me personally, I'll be abandoning the other video editing software I've used to this point. The best thing to do is to try it out for yourself by downloading the free trial version to make sure it works on your system. You can find the trial at Adobe's website.

Works on my XP computer, Great DVD quality
I bought this software to replace my older Pinnacle 10 software because it had poor DVD quality when viewing on the new LCD flat screen TV's, kind of like watching through Venetian blinds. I re-made some Pinnacle 10 videos using PE4. The DVD quality is now excellent.

When I first used the capture feature, I had trouble with it. I didn't find any info in the troubleshooting or knowledge base, so I called customer support. They connected me with a guy who really knew his stuff. He walked me through some tests and after removing some stray files from the pinnacle 10 uninstall and fixing a windows registry, all was well. A+ for customer support!

As of now, I made five DVD videos using all features without crashes. I like how you can add as many audio and video layers in the timeline as needed. You can pre-render sections with multiple layers to allow for smooth preview. On my older machine, this really helps. I don't have an HD camcorder, but I did import a MPEG4 HD file made off my HDTV wonder tuner card just as a test. I was able to edit it and burn to re-writable DVD. The picture quality wasn't HD, but as good as any store bought DVD.

Hardware/Software:
Camcorder- Sony, DCR TRV950 using IEEE1394 DV capture
Computer- 2.8GHz Pentium 4
Memory- 2G DDR
Video Card- ATI, Radeon 9800 pro w/128M RAM, 8X AGP
Tuner- ATI, HDTV Wonder
Hard Drives- Two 250G EIDE
OS- Windows XP home edition
Video capture and editing- Adobe Premier Elements 4
Still picture editing- Adobe Photoshop 6
Vector drawing- CorelDraw 11